


No Peace for the Wicked

by rosestone



Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: F/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Secret Identity, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22599268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosestone/pseuds/rosestone
Summary: Irene Peace has a secret: she's a superhero.  So far, she's managed to avoid confessing to her partner Barron.Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
Relationships: Barron Battle/Ms. Peace
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_rck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/gifts).



Irene Peace stared at the little plastic stick, not sure if she felt relief or dread.

She'd suspected for a little while, and _knowing_ felt like an enormous burden off her shoulders. No more worrying, or speculation about what else might have caused those subtle changes in her body. She could just breathe.

On the other hand...

Barron. She had to tell him; it'd be cruel not to. But they hadn't been dating for that long, really, not in the grand scheme of things, and family was something they'd never discussed. It had been a deliberate decision on her part to avoid a history she hated remembering - and, she suspected, on his part as well - and now that was going to come back to bite her. What if he hated children?

She'd have to tell him about her powers, too. That wasn't something she could keep on hiding, not now, and it was going to make this even harder. She'd managed to escape the contemporary superhero culture's obsession with inter-marrying to ensure their children had powers, mainly by hiding her own powers long enough to avoid ending up at Sky High, but she knew it'd leaked out into the civilian population. What if Barron believed it?

Irene didn't think he would. He didn't seem like the type. But it wasn't as though it'd come up while they were having laughing arguments about modern art and politics.

There was no point in sitting here over-thinking. The longer she left this, the worse it would be, after all. She strode towards the door of her apartment, determined to find him and tell him as quickly as she could manage, and - 

The comm in the corner buzzed.

She glared at it. Of course. It only ever seemed to go off when there was something more important she needed to do.

Well. She'd just have to find Barron later.

It was time to go to work.

She didn't see anybody on her way up to the building's roof. That wasn't a surprise; her superiors preferred their operations to run with the minimum possible risk that civilians might be harmed or agents' identities compromised, and that meant getting everyone out. They probably would have cleared as many buildings as possible nearby, too.

Not that it mattered. That wasn't her part of the operation. Her job was to find a vantage, wait, and strike.

It was a good site. The building itself wasn't enormous, but it was enough taller than the ones around that she had a clear line of sight to the op site. She took the binoculars out of her handbag and began scanning the horizon.

There. A little cluster of heroes, standing out brightly in their uniforms. They were ducking and weaving towards... a crowd? Ah. Puppetmaster, then. She'd wondered how long it would be until she was called in for this one. Ordinary heroes hadn't been much good against him so far; they were too worried about hurting the civilian cannon fodder he kept around him. Never mind that nobody actually knew whether those poor bastards actually had any kind of consciousness left, or if they'd been so utterly blanked they'd be nothing more than empty bodies once he'd dropped them.

That was a risk Irene would just have to take. He could do far, far worse than he'd managed so far. Most of the analysis she'd read of the Puppetmaster's actions suggested he almost certainly would. And one thing she'd long since accepted about herself was that, when her life inevitably brought her in the direction of the trolley problem, she would never hesitate to pull the lever.

Irene could feel his mind even from this great distance. Her superiors would doubtless want to know, later, what she had felt from his captives. They would be dissatisfied by her answer - but, as she'd told them before, her power worked on a purely biological level. She knew nothing about the target's mind that she couldn't deduce by their actions.

One moment. Two. Puppetmaster was fully under her control now, though he didn't know it. Yet.

She'd seen video of him in the reports her superiors had been compiling, preparing for the moment he'd be declared too much of a danger to be allowed to run free. He was precise. Controlled. The suits he wore were expensive and always perfectly pressed. He did his best to keep his captives in the same condition, though he allowed that to fall by the wayside when he was evading the authorities.

His movements were clumsy now. He hadn't noticed -

Yet. He stumbled to a halt, staring around for the threat he'd realised was there. He likely knew all the powersets of the heroes his prisoners were holding off, so he was searching for someone else, perhaps hidden in a nearby building. He wasn't looking nearly far enough away.

Most powers were such personal things. Some changed themselves, or the air by their skin, or the things they touched. Some could reach a little further - those with elemental powers were notorious for it. But even they had an upper limit.

There were very, very few powers with a range like hers. Most of them had been snatched up by the government, identities and powers obscured by the Powers Act. Irene thought it was silly, honestly - she was sure she hadn't met everyone with abilities like hers, but everyone she _had_ had the same kind of limits she did. An incredible distance, but only one person at a time. It wasn't as if they could replace conventional weaponry in the case of another war.

Better not to let him realise what he was up against. Irene pushed a little harder, flipping switches in his brain and sealing them into place. The human body was very good at keeping itself alive; she, however, was better.

If he'd been less willing to hurt civilians, maybe she wouldn't have needed to go this far. Maybe she could have gotten away with simply pushing him into a reversible coma, and she would have met him for real later, after long interviews with her superiors had convinced him it was better to live and use his abilities for the government. She'd seen it happen before. But the analysis, in this case, suggested he wouldn't flip so easily, and trying to imprison him was far too much of a risk. There were ways around power-nullification rooms, after all - and allowing someone as dangerous as him to escape would create consequences nobody could predict.

Puppeteer fell to his knees. He seemed to realise his breathing was constricted, then slumped further still, head striking pavement.

Long experience had taught her there was no surviving at this point. She still lingered, though, waiting for the last galvanic twitch to throw her out of his brain. It seemed... respectful.

Later, they'd run an interview on the nightly news. Not with her; she didn't fit the profile they needed. They had someone else from the organisation specially picked out for these situations. A man, of course. Ex-military, with a bearing anyone could recognise. He'd speak regretfully about how he hadn't _wanted_ to do it, of course - who could! - but it had been necessary. Such evil could not have been allowed to continue to threaten innocents. Maybe he'd shed a tear. Irene had no idea, since she'd never bothered watching.

With a jerk, she found herself alone in her mind again. Irene stood slowly, stretching aching limbs, and pressed a button on her comm. That would summon in the agents who'd clean the site up and take the civilians - dead or alive - out of the way of any news helicopters that might show up. Either they'd need to hide the evidence of an operation that'd treated civilian lives a little too cavalierly, or they'd need to hide them away for gentle interrogation, health checks and introductions to psychologists. Journalists wouldn't help either aim.

Hopefully they could get the post-op business dealt with fast. Irene had far more important things to do than sitting around rehashing everything she'd done for the analysts' benefit. Surely they had to be as bored as she was by now. It wasn't like she ever did anything especially interesting, after all. Sit on a roof, take out the target, go home. Wait for the next call. Try to build herself a life that wouldn't fall to pieces if the next call came at an inconvenient time.

Like Barron. God. It had been easy enough to pretend she could confess all her lies earlier, but now... She couldn't tell him. She'd signed innumerable NDAs when they'd taken her on. If she could get him cleared, maybe, but she knew most of the agents' and operatives' spouses didn't know what they really did.

That was the problem with working for an agency like this. It'd seemed like her best possible option when she'd been caught at the hospital, eighteen and officially powerless and barely scraping by. And the work they asked her to do hadn't seemed so strange either. She was, after all, the ultimate example that there were people out there with powers that could be terribly dangerous, and just because she'd had good intentions didn't mean everybody would. They needed a group of people who could make the hard choices without being too changed by it, whether those choices meant assassination, detainment, or simply tracking known powers in an attempt to ensure villains didn't come out of nowhere.

Even if he'd had clearance, how could she possibly have said any of that to Barron?

And what on earth was she supposed to say instead? _I'm a superhero, Barron. I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier. But I actually have to keep lying to you because everything about my abilities and the work I do is classified. No, I can't tell you why._

What did normal heroes tell their civilian partners? Was there a point at which they let them fully inside the mask, or did they only ever let them so far in? Or did they drop them when they finally found another hero they liked enough to marry?

Maybe if she spent her debrief brainstorming a cover story with the analysts they'd take pity on her and let her go home early. Some of them must have faced this dilemma before. They'd understand.

She couldn't tell the full story yet, though. Everyone would be far too interested in the idea of a child that might have her powers, and she'd rather not be bothered about it every time she had to go into the offices. Maybe she'd just say she was thinking of telling her boyfriend she had powers before the lie went on too long, and see what they thought.

Over in the distance, cars surrounded the fallen civilians. Most of them were shaking their heads, dazed. One, lying still on the pavement as agents surrounded him, was not.

That was all part of the business.

"You have powers."

Irene resisted the urge to squirm in her seat. Barron was staring at her as if she were a total stranger. This was going so much worse than she'd thought it might.

"You understand why I couldn't tell you when we met."

"No. Of course not." He rose from his chair, hands tight around the back. "But you're not an active-duty hero."

"No." It was a fair guess; she'd spend a lot more time running out on work or dates if she were. "My abilities aren't really suited for combat."

"I see."

Irene bit her lip, looking down. The analysts hadn't had any particularly useful suggestions; most of their shared-around-the-office ideas were for people like them, who didn't have powers and had a decent chance of being able to pass for an accountant or a bureaucrat. But they'd still managed to hash something out. "My abilities are... I guess you'd say they're useful as support? I was offered a job doing back-end work when the real heroes have a major fight going on. One of the conditions is I can't actually tell anyone what I can do. If it got out, it would cause... problems."

"That'd be a hard secret to keep for most heroes." He dropped back into his chair, grabbed his wine glass, and took a deep gulp. "But you didn't go to Sky High."

That couldn't possibly be a guess. "You're a hero too?" Irene's heart was hammering so hard she could hear it. Now _here_ was a solution to her problem she hadn't seen coming -

"That," Barron said, setting his glass down and meeting her eyes, "depends entirely on your point of view."


	2. Chapter 2

"Being a _supervillain_ is not something you can have a _point of view_ about." Irene felt like she was going to be sick. She wanted, very badly, to snatch up Barron's glass and drain it - or throw it at him - or, perhaps, run away and pretend none of this had happened, or -

And absolutely none of them were viable options. If it weren't for the baby, she might at the very least have been able to get thoroughly drunk without guilt, but that door was closed now. Getting into a fight wasn't... but if they got into a _serious_ fight, the kind with powers involved, she'd kill him. That wasn't something she was prepared to have on her conscience, no matter what crimes he'd committed.

"I disagree."

"You're being ridiculous." It was something she might have said in a happier time, while he complained about co-workers and running job hunts for the company he worked for. In fact - "Was everything you told me a lie? Career villains don't have time for a day job."

"And what about everything _you_ said to _me?_ "

"We literally met at my day job, Barron. Remember? The one you said you'd stopped outside every day for a month trying to get up the courage to ask me out?" Her stomach hurt. It'd seemed romantic then, knowing how caught he'd been between wanting to get to know her and not wanting to make her uncomfortable by approaching her at her job. She was the one who'd solved the impasse, going outside to ask who he'd been lingering for. She could still remember how she'd felt, lightheaded and light on her feet, when he'd said it was _her_. Nobody had thought she was worth a second glance since her grandmother's death.

His cheeks reddened. "You're right. That was stupid. But I wasn't lying. I was there looking for a new property - the one I'd been in was too small and we didn't have the cashflow for something more like what I wanted, and I saw you through the window, and... that was that."

"Are you planning to explain what you mean by - oh my god. You have minions. Don't you?"

"Technically."

"Barron."

"Look." He reached out for her abortively, then pressed his palms to the table. "You didn't go to Sky High, Irene, so you don't know what it was like there. Honestly, I didn't either, not until I'd graduated and grown up a bit, but at least I'd seen it. Hadn't understood it, but I'd seen it."

"If you're about to tell me the government does some terrible thing that only you know about, you can save it." Hopefully he wasn't about to tell her that they assassinated villains too dangerous to be left alive. She honestly wasn't sure how she'd react to that one.

"Oh, no. People know about it. They just don't give a shit." He grimaced. "You've seen sidekicks, right?"

She blinked. "The ones who follow along with heroes?"

"Them, yeah. Sky High takes every powered kid they can find. They probably miss out on legacy villains, and anyone whose powers came in late - like you, I assume - but they vacuum everyone else up. And do you know what they do first day of classes? They split 'em up. Take the ones with useful powers and send them off to useful classes, and leave everyone else to learn sidekicking. Ever noticed how few heroes actually _have_ a sidekick? It's not exactly a growth area."

Irene frowned. "And? I'm not seeing the problem here. Someone whose powers aren't useful in the field shouldn't be encouraged to become a superhero. They'll just end up getting killed."

"Two problems there. First - they aren't being encouraged to become superheroes, but they _are_ encouraged to become sidekicks. Same risks. Second - they aren't taught anything _other_ than how to become a sidekick. Nothing they'd need if they ended up deciding that career path wasn't for them. And it's deliberately difficult to withdraw students from Sky High, presumably because they don't want half-trained teen heroes going vigilante and getting themselves killed."

"Oh." She rubbed her palms on her skirt. "Who exactly are your minions, Barron?"

"Sidekicks, of course."

She swallowed. "Do they know what you're recruiting them for?"

"I don't _lie_ to them, if that's what you're asking, Irene. And it's not as though I go around bothering anyone and everyone who's ever been to Sky High - I just find people who seem like they need help -"

"Some people would call that targeting the vulnerable -"

"- and if they aren't interested, I leave them my card and go. Sometimes they get back to me later, sometimes they don't, but either way at least they have the option."

"And you're doing this entirely out of the goodness of your heart, of course."

She could see him hesitating, which really told her everything she needed to know. He might have decided honesty was the better choice right now, and he might care too much about her to hurt her to protect whatever it was he'd built, but when it came down to it he'd lie about the dirty parts of his job if he thought they'd be too much for her to swallow.

It was astounding how similar they were, really.

"Of course it's not altruism," Barron said, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. It didn't come across quite as casually as she thought he'd intended. "But this is how it _works_. I don't have personal wealth, or connections, or anything like that. The only power I have in this world is my superpower, and heroing won't get me where I want to go - or, for that matter, get any of the people I'm helping there either. This is the only way I've been able to come up with that it'll work."

"I'm sure you spent a lot of time trying to come up with another solution." She couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

"Thank you for your confidence in me, Irene. I _did_ , actually."

They fell silent for a moment. Barron strode over to the kitchen and began fiddling with the pile of letters on the counter, not meeting her eyes.

"Do you really live here?" she asked.

"It's not like I've been doing this for long," he said, sounding irritated. "I don't have piles of cash lying around to buy whatever beautiful house catches my eye."

"Oh."

"Why didn't you go to Sky High? I'd have remembered you if you had, I know it."

She shrugged. "Nobody else in my family had superpowers. They frightened me when they came in, so I didn't tell anyone." Or, more accurately, other people's potential reactions had frightened her. She hadn't seen anything wrong with helping someone who was in pain pass on, but she'd known other people wouldn't see it that way. Safer to give up whatever benefits being officially known as a superhero might bring her and avoid the problem altogether.

"But you did end up on the register somehow, or you wouldn't have your secret back-end job now."

"I grew up. Decided I'd like to try to make a difference." The best lies held a kernel of truth. And, to be fair, she _was_ making a difference. The world would be a much worse place if villains like Puppetmaster were allowed to run around and hurt whoever they liked.

"I see."

He had the expression on his face he always wore when they were talking through something he thought was really interesting. Someone who didn't know him would have called it neutral, or at best mildly interested; Irene knew better. There was a sort of hunger in his eyes, a desire to dig up every little anecdote and scrap of history that made the subject tick. She'd liked it a lot more when he was applying it to... anything other than her, really.

Well, the best defence was a good offence, wasn't it? "What about you?"

"Hmm?"

She leaned forwards. "Are you actually a supervillain? Or are you just collecting minions and making plans you'll definitely carry out one day?"

"Is this your way of asking me what name I fight under, Irene?" He hesitated, a little too long for it to come off as anything but a ploy. "Baron Battle."

She stared at him. "I beg your pardon? Your name is _Barron Smith_. Did you seriously copy your first name into your supervillain identity?"

"Well..."

"Oh, god."

"Barron Battle is actually my legal name."

"Are you -"

"Look! When you're blessed with a name that sounds like a supervillain callsign, _not_ using it seems like the worse choice. Right?"

"How the hell do you think you're going to keep a secret identity like this?"

"Irene." He dropped down into the chair opposite her, eyes fixed on hers. "I went to Sky High. They already know everything they need to about me. As long as I can keep under the radar for as long as I need to stay legitimate - and, yes, you're right, keeping the name Barron doesn't help there, but in my defence I _tried_ fake names and I never got the hang of responding to them - as long as I can do that, it doesn't really matter. Someday I won't need to any more, and then it won't matter what stupid choices I made with my name now."

"You seem very certain of that."

He shrugged one shoulder. "I've had a while to plan, and a while to refine my plans. All I have to do is hit a critical mass of infamy, money, employees, so on and so forth, and then there won't be any point in keeping the secret any more. Though I'll admit my original plans never had space for a relationship, and the revised ones didn't consider that relationship might be with a _hero_."

"If they had, I would have been quite disappointed in myself."

"Ha. I suppose you would." He fell silent, tapping his fingers on the table. "Irene..."

"Hmm?"

He reached out and touched her hand, delicately, nothing more than a brushing of fingers. It was strange that she'd never realised how hot he ran before. "What brought this on?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Why confess to having powers now, when you've kept this a secret for so long?"

"Oh." It would probably be more sensible, at this point, not to tell him - or, at the very least, to come up with some excuse to leave and work out how trustworthy she thought Barron was now, in light of what he'd told her. The very idea was too exhausting to contemplate. "I'm pregnant."

" _Oh_." He rocked back on his chair, face blank with shock. "Shit."

"Basically."

"You know," he said after a long moment, "they used to tell us about this kind of thing happening in class. Battle stress, empathising too much with the enemy, that kind of thing. I always thought heroes who actually did that kind of thing sounded like utter suckers. Who could be that stupid, right?"

"It's not like we knew."

"I'm pretty sure they had a case study for dating-as-civilians, too. Something along the lines that we're all adrenaline junkies and it's no wonder we fall in with each other in real life too."

She snorted. "That sounds like a few people I've met through work."

"There were definitely a few people we were all _very carefully_ not looking at during that class, yes." He sighed. "Remembering all the nasty things I used to think about them and their likelihood of stumbling into this kind of situation is making me suspect I was an asshole as a teenager."

"I think most people were, Barron."

"True." He met her eyes. "Okay. Can we set the... everything else aside for a little while and just talk about this? No matter what ends up happening, there's going to be logistics we need to work out."

"Go on, then."

"Okay. First things first." He met her eyes again. "Are you keeping the baby?"

"Yes?"

"I'm not judging you if you don't want to. It's not like I'd be the one carrying it around for nine months, after all, and this is... complicated."

She shook her head. "No, really. I... I'll admit I haven't thought too hard about it, but I just - I _want_ the baby, Barron."

The idea of getting an abortion felt like far more of a loss than she would have expected, considering how little time she'd actually known she was pregnant. It wasn't like this was something she'd spent a lot of time thinking about, either. Family as defined by other people had always been a fraught topic; family as _she_ defined it had been her and her grandmother, and then, much later, her and Barron. She'd _wanted_ a family, true, but she'd never known quite how to get one.

Maybe that was why she'd fallen in with Barron so eagerly; at heart, she was still a sad little girl who desperately wanted someone to love her. And here was her chance. As long as she did a better job as a parent than hers had done - frankly, it would be hard not to - she'd always have someone. No matter what.

"Right, then." He sat back, rubbing a hand over his mouth. "Okay. I... okay, I'll be honest, I have no idea what to do next. I don't know anything about babies, Irene."

"Me neither." Her parents had realised they didn't care about children after only one, something she'd been grateful for on a daily basis as a child; her life would have been so much harder with a younger sibling to look after too.

"Well, that puts us on equal footing, at least."

"It can't be that hard to learn, though, can it? Plenty of people do."

"I suppose you're right. Though - I don't want to sound like I don't want to be involved, because I _do_ , but my work situation might make helping out... complicated."

Irene frowned at him. "No babies in supervillain bases."

"Oh, I'm fully in agreement with you there." He shuddered. "But there's only so much I can do remotely, especially when the business is still fairly new. And I'd have to show up for supervillain appearances personally."

"I could quit my barista job. I have a fair amount saved up from my _other_ job, and that's fairly intermittent." She'd never broken the habit of frugality she'd developed first as a child and then more imminently when she was out on her own. It was something she might have to work on; their child deserved better than to grow up thinking she was terrified they'd end up on the streets.

"I suppose." He frowned. "It doesn't really seem fair, though. Having a steady employment record is _useful_ , and giving that up -"

"It's not like cafes are thin on the ground, Barron. I could walk into another job just like that if I had to. And having a baby is generally considered a very acceptable reason not to be in work for a period of time."

"Still. I don't suppose you'd take money if I offered it?"

"I can support myself, Barron."

"Ah, but it's not like this would just be for you." He smiled winningly at her. "What kind of father would I be if I didn't support my child financially?"

She hesitated. It wasn't a _terrible_ reason. But she didn't want to risk ending up dependent on Barron's money, not after she'd already misjudged his character. "I'll consider it. But I certainly wouldn't be taking money for myself."

He sat back. "That's a moral principle I can give you."

"How on earth do you make money as a supervillain, anyway? I don't remember hearing your name in connection to any bank robberies." She'd barely heard of Baron Battle at all, but she was sure his name would have come up if he'd done something as stupid as that; bank robberies had an unfortunate tendency to produce dead or injured civilians, so villains who committed them tended to attract a lot of attention. And superheroes.

"Mostly I buy shares in businesses and then set fire to their rivals. It's a good way to put the stock price up."

"Barron!"

"Hey, it's not like I don't try to make sure the civilians get out. And I choose my targets, too - I do my best to make sure I go after whichever one's the biggest asshole."

Irene frowned at him. "Sure."

"No, really. You wouldn't believe how many times I had to set fire to that refinery outside town before they stopped dumping their waste into the river. I wouldn't be all that surprised if they'd started up again, either."

Irene blinked. "That seems like it'd be the purview of - oh, what's her name, the water hero -"

"Whirlpool? She always showed up late when they were the ones in trouble. I guess she hadn't come up with a better way of dealing with them than letting me do it."

"Oh."

"I know this all has to make it sound like I'm some horrible person, Irene. But I don't _want_ to hurt people. I just want to be able to run my life and my business the way I want it."

Irene didn't answer. He seemed sincere - too much so, maybe. What he was telling her was almost certainly true. It just wasn't _all_ of the truth.

She hadn't spent a lot of time in the agency's offices; they didn't have much use for her there. But she'd haunted the cafeteria early on, taking advantage of the free food and of the people eating it who might explain to her just what she'd gotten herself into. The one thing she'd heard over and over again was that villains always lied. Sometimes it was for self-aggrandisement, sometimes for their protection, sometimes because they'd been lying for so long they'd bought into their own rhetoric; but it didn't matter why they did it, really. What they'd wanted her to remember was that they were inherently untrustworthy.

It was the rhetoric that was the problem here, she guessed. Barron must have wanted to be a villain for much longer than he'd had a cause; but by now, he'd had a cause long enough that he'd forgotten whatever had originally incited it. And now he was desperately trying to use that cause to convince her he was good enough for a hero.

"Running your business the way you want it hurts people, though. No matter how careful you are, sooner or later there'll be someone who doesn't manage to escape when you set the building on fire. And what about the economic cost? What if someone gets fired because they didn't see you coming and they can't manage without that salary? Doesn't that count as harm?"

"I could employ them too?"

"Barron."

"No, that was serious. It's not as though I've set some rule for myself saying I'll only employ people with superpowers. And at some point I'm bound to run out of sidekicks, anyway."

Despite herself, her lips twitched. "You can't solve every problem by employing it, Barron."

"Of course I can. You know what I am?" He met her eyes, deepening his voice to a fair imitation of the Mayor. "I am a _job creator_."

Irene burst into shrill, hysterical giggles. It shouldn't have been funny - it wasn't, really - but the idea of the Mayor, who spent so much time pontificating on the merits of small businesspeople and superheroes, declaring that about _Barron_ -

"We are," Barron went on, "truly the beating heart of the city. Only by our honest labour does the economy continue to - ah, damn, what does he -"

"Grow," Irene managed. "By leaps and bounds, just like the - oh god -"

"The heroes who spend so much of their time defending us." He dropped back into his normal voice. "I'd do the bit where he blathers on about how we all need to do our best to support our brave men and women and also Buy Local, but since nobody ever actually listens to that bit, I think I can get away with skipping it."

"Don't tell me _you've_ listened to that bit."

"Twice. The second time was almost exactly the same as the first, so I stopped bothering."

"Well, you've heard significantly more of what he has to say than I have, then." She slumped back into her chair. "Seriously, though?"

"Yes, I did actually -"

"Not that. I could actually believe _you_ listening to the Mayor. No, I meant the job creator thing."

"I am, though. I employ people, and those people go out and spend money in the community. I even pay taxes."

"What about the property destruction?"

"An excellent opportunity for urban renewal."

She snorted.

"No, really. I can't imagine why else they don't tell the heroes to make sure to get the giant robots out of the city before punching them to bits."

"You don't really pay taxes. Do you?"

"Of course I do. I don't mind people knowing about what I do as Baron Battle, but at least for the moment I want to keep official attention away from the business I'm running as Barron Smith. That means following all the legal requirements - which, yes, means I'm paying taxes. It also makes things significantly easier for my employees, since not all of them are ready to make the leap into being paid cash under the table or patronising accountants who run a laundromat out of their spare room."

"A -"

"Money laundering. I don't pretend to understand how it works, and it's not something I actually _need_ right now - my cashflow is surprisingly legal, considering my line of work - but I have a few contacts who do it. I thought it'd be a good idea to make those connections now, before it actually comes up."

"Oh. I see." How on earth was she supposed to respond to _that?_

He cleared his throat. "I, uh - you know, I'm kind of hungry. Do you want anything to eat?"

"Uh. Maybe?" Irene wasn't quite hungry, but - "Why not."

"Indian fine?"

"Sure. My usual." She suspected he'd offered for the same reason she'd hesitated - deciding whether they could trust each other with food was more mental effort than either of them were ready for just now. "I might step out for a few minutes - let me know when it's here, all right?"

Barron nodded and turned to the phone, giving her a chance to slip out onto the balcony.

The night air was pleasantly cool. She closed her eyes against the gleam of streetlights, breathing steadily and hoping it'd calm her churning stomach.

It would be comforting to tell herself that this could have gone worse. Frankly, though, she wasn't sure there was that much further to fall. It _could_ have - he could've reacted violently, or kidnapped her to some secret hideout until the baby was born - but...

What was she going to _do?_

It was easy to laugh with Barron about the ridiculous situation they'd landed in, or argue with him about his weasel-wording. It would be much, much harder to do either of those after she'd had to meet her superiors' eyes and tell them she hadn't seen any evidence of surreptitious supervillain activity in her neighbourhood lately.

Irene hadn't _seen_ anything. But trying to dance around the truth wouldn't win her any points when it came out - and it would, she knew it. Sooner or later someone would decide to helpfully run a background check on the boyfriend she'd had hanging around for ages, assuming that she'd want to tell him about her powers eventually and that she'd decide to do the sensible thing and get him cleared _before_ telling him. Or maybe Barron would become dangerous enough to be worth collecting information on and she'd be seen visiting him, or ratted out by a spy.

And then what? Civilians treated the idea of a superhero and a supervillain becoming involved as a good setup for a rom-com, but her superiors wouldn't see it that way. Just because Barron hadn't done anything to get himself on their shit list yet didn't mean he might not in the future, and the fact that she'd been stupid enough to get involved with him wouldn't reflect well on her. Irene might end up being forced into informing on him; she might end up in prison. And what would happen to their baby then? Would he or she become one of the many 'orphans' shuffled from family to family - all powered, of course - after their superpowered parents ended up dead or in prison? She didn't know enough about the system to know how bad things might be for the baby if its carers knew it was a supervillain's child, but even the idea - letting some complete stranger take her child because Barron hadn't turned out to be who she'd thought he was - no. No. She couldn't do it.

Irene fumbled around behind herself until she found a rickety chair, sinking onto it and slumping back. She needed a plan. They'd always gotten her out of trouble before.

Getting caught at the hospital had never been part of the plan. Getting forced into semi-legal assassination had never been part of the plan. But she'd adapted, hadn't she? She'd found a way through, convinced everyone this was what she was meant for. It'd worked out in the end.

So. How was she going to handle this?

Lying wouldn't work, not long-term. There'd always be too much risk of something going wrong. Quitting wouldn't work either; she was fairly sure her bosses wouldn't consider her resignation permanent unless she was actually dead, and there'd be just as much of a risk that they'd find out she and Barron were involved.

Of course, Irene could pre-empt that. If she left and joined Barron's nascent supervillain group - she couldn't bring herself to call it a business - he might be able to protect her. They certainly wouldn't be able to force her anywhere.

She'd be trapped inside. She'd never know whether they cared enough about whatever government secrets she might know to be waiting outside to ambush her or not; she'd never know whether they were actually upset enough to bump Barron significantly up their list of priorities, not until they broke the doors down. They'd both be living in fear. Barron might be able to handle that, but she wasn't sure she could, and it didn't seem fair to raise the baby like that.

Or she could just... go. Irene knew how to run. She'd learned how to hide, how to build an identity that wouldn't fall apart under the eyes of government agents. And she'd taught herself to make friends - not close friends, she'd never worked out how to do that, but the kind who'd be happy to help her out and never quite notice they only knew her skin-deep.

It wouldn't be easy. It might not be the kindest way to raise a child, either, though she thought it'd still be better than the alternatives.

All she had to do now was convince Barron.

Barron glanced over and frowned as she re-entered the room. "The food's not here yet. It normally takes - what's wrong?"

She let out a long breath. "I don't think I can do this, Barron."

"I - is this because I'm a supervillain? Because -"

"Stop." Astoundingly, he did. "Remember that back-end superhero job I mentioned?"

"Yes?"

"I can't talk about it. Really. But... it would go very badly, for both of us, if they found out we'd been together." She felt like she could hardly breathe around the lump in her throat. This was going to hurt.

A grim expression crossed his face. " _That_ kind of government work. Right."

She didn't answer. It wasn't like there was anything else she could have said, after all.

"What are you planning? You could - if the baby got your powers that'd be fine, but if he got mine..."

If he got Barron's, the secret would be out. There weren't that many people with fire-based powers out there, and they were all different enough that the baby's parentage would be obvious. He was right: it'd be a disaster. What Barron hadn't considered, however, was how risky _her_ powers could be.

It'd been easy to dismiss the risk when she'd thought there was a decent chance the baby wouldn't have superpowers at all. But now - the thought of spending years there waiting anxiously to see how his powers manifested, knowing her superiors were watching just as anxiously for any sign he might grow up to become another Agent Peace - no. She'd chosen this. She'd chosen it the day she'd realised how desperately her grandmother wanted to die painlessly and decided to use the abilities she'd only unleashed a few times by accident on suffering roadkill. She'd chosen it again at seventeen when she'd begun haunting hospitals in her off hours, searching for people who were dying and willing to go faster if it meant an end to pain, and again when she'd been caught at eighteen and offered a way out of prison.

If her son grew up in a place like that, they would never, ever let him choose.

"I'll leave. They'll understand why I need some time off." They wouldn't, really. But as far as they knew, they still had her over a barrel. She wasn't sure it would occur to any of them that she'd paid enough attention to know how to keep out of their sight once she'd gone - not until it was too late to find her, anyway.

"I could hide you." It was almost a question.

Yesterday, it wouldn't have been. Maybe if she'd decided to run sooner, kept her mouth shut and spun some story about drummed-up charges, they both could have kept believing pretty lies about each other. Unfortunately, that hadn't occurred to her; and so today she knew he was only trustworthy to a point and he knew... what?

"I suppose that would be unwise, though. If they found out and thought something else was going on." He sounded resigned.

He knew, she realised, that her ex-employers weren't the only ones she'd be hiding from.

"We should come up with a safe way to exchange information," Irene said. "You shouldn't have to be cut off from us completely just because it isn't safe to be seen together."

Barron nodded sharply, turning to the table and scribbling something on a piece of paper. "Here. It's the combination to a locker at Central Train Station. We can set something more permanent up later, of course, but I don't imagine there'll be time for that before you go. And - I know you may not want to take anything else from me, but would you take money? Enough to get yourself settled, at least?"

"I'm perfectly capable of surviving on my own, Barron."

"I don't doubt that. But you shouldn't have to be reduced to mere survival, Irene. And you won't be alone. You'll have a baby to look after too."

She bit her lip. "I don't want to take from your employees."

He slashed a hand through the air. "I can make more money. Please, Irene."

"Fine. But it has to be untraceable. If they work out there's a connection between us, they could use that."

"Don't worry. I know people, remember?"

She sighed. "That isn't always going to be the answer, Barron."

"It can be." There was a determined glint in his eye, as if he really believed he could make it true if he just tried hard enough. Maybe it'd always been true for him. Maybe he just hadn't run up against any indestructible walls yet.

"Sure."

"You don't believe me. Well, I'll prove it. Maybe once I do you can stop hiding. And in the meantime - we can write. I know it probably won't be safe to meet up often, but maybe we'll be able to manage sometimes. And I'll find people who can help you out. Not supervillains, obviously, it wouldn't be fair of me to do that, but I have a lot of connections. We can sort this out, Irene. It won't be forever."

"Mmm." For a moment Irene let herself sway into him. It was a nice fantasy, after all. "I don't know how safe it'd be to take the baby along if we do meet, but if we did you'd have to hide your powers, at least until it's old enough to keep the secret."

"Oh, of course. Though if she has powers early, she may just have to get used to lying. It's not unusual for children's powers to come in early, you know."

"Not really. Mine were late." She considered it for a moment. "Though I just might not have noticed. They weren't obvious."

"Mine were. I set fire to a lot of things as a kid."

She snickered. "I can imagine."

"You really can't. Let me know if you need me to send fireproof clothing. I have a good source, and employees working on improving it. I'm sure they'd like the opportunity to test it against someone else."

"I will."

"I mean it."

"And so do I. Dealing with a child that keeps setting fire to his clothes sounds awful."

"Her clothes." He paused. "Unless you know?"

"I've barely been pregnant long enough to know I _am_ pregnant, Barron," she said, pulling back and smiling at him. "No, I don't know. We'll just have to wait to find out."

"But you'll let me know. Right?"

"Of course I will." She'd like to think she couldn't be that cruel.

Barron took her hands, rubbing his thumb gently along the crease of her palm. "Will you stay the night?"

She shook her head as she tugged out of his grip. "I have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in. And it's just too dangerous."

"All right, then." He stood and watched as she gathered her things, looking slightly lost. "Irene?"

"Yes?" She paused by the door, bag dangling from one hand.

"I love you."

She summoned up her best smile, genuine and slightly watery. "I know. And - I love you too."

Irene turned and hurried out the door, not willing to wait and see how he reacted. If he didn't believe her, she didn't want to know.

And the sooner she could get herself set up somewhere new, the sooner they'd be able to work out a way to see each other again. Maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to have a real family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, the_rck! I hope you enjoyed this fic - it was a blast to write! Extra-special thanks go out to my beta asuralucier, who did a fabulous job astoundingly quickly.


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